Posted on 07/04/2004 5:19:27 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Professor Ernst Mayr, the scientist renowned as the father of modern biology, will celebrate his 100th birthday tomorrow by leading a scathing attack on creationism.
The evolutionary biologist, who is already acclaimed as one of the most prolific researchers of all time, has no intention of retiring and is shortly to publish new research that dismantles the fashionable creationist doctrine of “intelligent design”.
Although he has reluctantly cut his workload since a serious bout of pneumonia 18 months ago, Prof. Mayr has remained an active scientist at Harvard University throughout his 90s. He has written five books since his 90th birthday and is researching five academic papers. One of these, scheduled to appear later this year, will examine how “intelligent design” — the latest way in which creationists have sought to present a divine origin of the world — was thoroughly refuted by Charles Darwin a century and a half ago.
His work is motivated in part by a sense of exasperation at the re-emergence of creationism in the USA, which he compares unfavourably with the widespread acceptance of evolution that he encountered while growing up in early 20th-century Germany.
The states of Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Oklahoma currently omit the word “evolution” from their curriculums. The Alabama state board of education has voted to include disclaimers in textbooks describing evolution as a theory. In Georgia, the word “evolution” was banned from the science curriculum after the state’s schools superintendent described it as a “controversial buzzword”.
Fierce protest, including criticism from Jimmy Carter, the former President, reversed this.
Prof. Mayr, who will celebrate his 100th birthday at his holiday home in New Hampshire with his two daughters, five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, was born on 5 July 1905 in Kempten, Germany. He took a PhD in zoology at the University of Berlin, before travelling to New Guinea in 1928 to study its diverse bird life. On his return in 1930 he emigrated to the USA. His most famous work, Systematics and the Origin of Species, was published in 1942 and is regarded still as a canonical work of biology.
It effectively founded the modern discipline by combining Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection with Gregor Mendel’s genetics, showing how the two were compatible. Prof. Mayr redefined what scientists mean by a species, using interbreeding as a guide. If two varieties of duck or vole do not interbreed, they cannot be the same species.
Prof. Mayr has won all three of the awards sometimes termed the “triple crown” of biology — the Balzan Prize, the Crafoord Prize and the International Prize for Biology. Although he formally retired in 1975, he has been active as an Emeritus Professor ever since and has recently written extensively on the philosophy of biology.
Oooh! Oooh! (Waves hand!)
Because it turns out that it's always a tree?
Tree blind mice...
Can't be done. The "life direction" runs counter to the direction of the Second Law. Yet matter seems entirely under that law. So how can life emerge from non-life?
BB, you've been in and out of these threads long enough to know quite well that no one yet has worked out the method by which life first began. There are some ideas about it, but nothing's been demonstrated yet. However, I doubt that the Second Law is a problem. The energy for the first living molecules probably came from the same source as the energy that sustains a tree. It's the sun.
That's a huge leap, PH. You have (1) inert matter. Then suddenly, magically, you have (2) a living molecule. The sun did it. Okay, 'splain to me how inert matter cooked up the ability to utilize energy so that it could become alive. The Second Law says that if you leave a material system to its own devices, entropy -- heat death -- takes over, not life. How did matter suddenly get "smart enuf" to utilize energy for the life process -- which is the very opposite of heat death? Did the Second Law find a way to overrule itself so that matter could do this?
At least explain to me how you "square" abiogenesis with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. 'Cause I sure can't figure out any way to do it.
All right, who are you and what did you do with the real Betty Boop?
I think I've already said we don't yet know the means by which it happened.
The sun did it.
I didn't say that. I said that's the source of the engergy.
Okay, 'splain to me how inert matter cooked up the ability to utilize energy so that it could become alive.
I can't. No one can. Not yet.
The Second Law says that if you leave a material system to its own devices, entropy -- heat death -- takes over, not life.
No, that's not it at all, except in a closed system with no external source of energy. We've got the sun. The sun, BB. That's where all life on earth gets its energy. (Except for a few creatures that live in weird undersea hot water vents.)
Life is an open system, or rather an open process. Material systems are closed. The Second Law pertains to the latter. But abiogenesis says the latter becomes the former. All you need is to add a little sunshine, and viola! Life results!!!
This is a "just so" story -- no explanation given of how this stunning transition could have been effected; just glide over the "missing part" and pretend it's not missing. And then (try to) call it "science." Jeez!!!!
Why do you accept the "premise" that a molecule is alive? Someone is trying to slip a logical fallacy into the argument.
Calm down, BB. No one is giving you a "just so" story. It's an area for investigation (unrelated to evolution), and it's being investigated. You gotta problem wid dat?
Yet life exists. Either the Second Law is false or you misunderstand it. I'm betting on the latter. The first instance of life is indeed a mystery, but there is nothing in science that did not begin as a mystery.
Well, do you really mind if someone tries a different approach to see what they can turn up? Or do you really expect it will/must be a Darwinist who comes up with that "Eureka!" moment?
Is it? You have (1) inert matter a very large vat of chemical soup. Then suddenly, magically a long time later, you have (2) a living self-replicating molecule(s).
It takes more than energy to turn dirt into the Empire State building. I would venture to say Venus has received more energy from the sun than the Earth has, and no one has discovered a mud hut there.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.